Each lc:include tag requests an HTML fragment via HTTP from the CAE. Every link within a fragment that is requested by the commerce system from the CAE is processed by the LiveContextLinkTransformer class. The transformer only applies for fragment requests and finally requests URL templates from the LinkRepository on the Commerce Adapter side. For fragment request the Commerce Adapter returns JSON strings to the CAE. Each of these JSON objects contains at least the values of the constants objectType and renderType and the ID of the content or commerce object.

Assume the HTML fragment contains a link to a CMArticle content item. Instead of rendering the regular link, for example

http://cae-host/blueprint/servlet/page/mySite/mySegment/mySeoContent-4712

the corresponding Link generated by the LiveContextLinkResolver would look like:

a href="<!--CM {
    "id":"cm-1696-4712",
    "renderType":"url",
    "externalSeoSegment":"mySeoContent-4712",
    "objectType":"content"}
    CM-->" ...

The CoreMedia Fragment Connector on the commerce side parses the JSON, identifies the object type and rendering type and applies a template to render a commerce link. For the given example, the template Content.url.jsp is used, applied by the pattern "<OBJECT_TYPE>.<RENDER_TYPE>.jsp".

The JSP file on the commerce side finally generates the resulting URL.

http://localhost/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/CoreMediaContentURL?
      storeId=10202&externalSeoSegment=spring-salads-1888&
      urlRequestType=Base&langId=-1&catalogId=10051

Note

The SEO feature has not been configured for this example, otherwise the externalSeoSegment value would be used to render a SEO friendly URL.

Other templates are located in the folder workspace\Stores\WebContent\Widgets-CoreMedia\com.coremedia.commerce.store.widgets.CoreMediaContentWidget\impl\templates by default. The path is configurable via property com.coremedia.widget.templates in coremedia-connector.properties. New templates can be added by extending the CommerceLinkResolver in the Blueprint workspace. Custom object types can be added, depending on the content type of the content or its property values. Also, additional rendering types can be defined for an object type. Using this templating mechanism, it is possible to support different layouts for content depending on its context.